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Review
His Majesty's Royal Space Navy Service Handbook is a dystopian work-com. The setting is the military of an evil space empire led by Smurg IV (whom I'm afraid I couldn't help picturing as Emperor Zurg from Toy Story, but that's neither here nor there), but the protagonist, Sheryl, isn't as interested in fighting the rebel forces as she is in the minutiae of bureaucracy and finding out who's been microwaving fish in the break room.
Gameplay is very smooth; the game has a limited verb list, and in a handy little quality-of-life feature, it even tells you when you no longer need a particular verb to make progress in the game (though in some cases you can still use these verbs to get optional extra flavor). Once you get into the flow of the game, it really carries you along, which is great for a parser-curious newbie or an occasional parser player who finds the possibility space of a more open parser intimidating (as well as for someone who might, hypothetically, be way behind on their Great Play Marathon game list because they were busy attending their sister's college graduation).
The writing's biggest flaw is that it can be a little obvious; if I told you to imagine Office Space in the setting of Star Wars you could probably make a pretty solid guess as to the plot points and jokes it covers. But what really stood out to me was the character of Sheryl. At first, she seemed like a caricature of a petty tyrant middle manager, judgmental and focused on all the wrong things, but the game has more sympathy for her than that would suggest, especially if you chase down some of that optional flavor I mentioned earlier. And it makes great use of her (limited third person) POV on her environment. I've always maintained that one of the secrets of creating a memorable PC in IF is that no item description is too mundane to be a vehicle for characterization, and this game really runs with that philosophy. Here's what you get when you examine the office coffee maker:
A basic osmosis coffee machine that's as old as Sheryl, but it still does its duty diligently without complaint or delay despite other, younger coffee makers being promoted past it because this coffee maker still believes that faith and loyalty are qualities worth believing in even if Senior Command, in their otherwise perfect leadership, are overly-dazzled by supposed innovation that only serves to mock the old ways without actually improving anything.
You can just hear her saying this, with increasingly heightened emotion and a worrying lack of pauses for breath.
And as the game went on, I increasingly felt the pathos of her efforts to metaphorically rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Haven't we all been there, trying to focus on the petty things we can control and shut out the sneaking suspicion that they don't really matter much in the face of the explosions happening outside the window?
